How To Humanise Campaigns

On Monday 15th November 2010, I’ll be in London speaking at the Social Not For Profit Summit, organised by the most excellent Barry Furby. It’s a part of the techMAP series of events, which is a community around technology, marketing, advertising and PR.

I did say to Barry at first that I didn’t think I was a good fit, but as he reminded me, I’ve worked in small non-profits for 10 years! My work at The River Church, as well as our offshoots, like Touch Conference, He Saved The Day, others that no longer have websites, and our upcoming project To-Get-Her, which aims to double the number of rooms available for those rescued from Human Trafficking.

In the true spirit of Scott Gould and Friends, I’d like to hear from you what you would share and what you think would add value to this summit.

Humanising Campaigns

Barry has asked me to speak on two things, the first of which is about making humanistic campaigns. For me this goes down to Social Authority. Anything campaign we do at church (and with Like Minds) always profiles people of various demographics, as the number one question people ask when it comes to community is “who here is like me?”

Converting Followers to Advocates

The second topic is one that we speak about a lot here through our conversations on participation. By inviting people to be involved, and putting the kids in the show, you increase people’s emotional investment and thus they become advocates with you. Of course, this only works if you genuinely believe in them. You can’t cheat your way to this.

Leadership expert John Maxwell always says that the strongest leadership is needed in church, where people are not paid to work and cannot be threatened to work. I agree – the non-profit realm is where really leadership is needed, so I’m sure there’s some debate to be had here.

Let’s Meet

If you’re in London on Monday 15th November, then I’d love to see you there. All directions and details are on their website. If you’re wondering if it’s for you, the type of things being look at are:

What about Charities and Not for Profits?
What about those with small or no budget to capitalise on the digital and social landscape?
What about those who struggle to achieve advocacy for their cause and look to Social for a source of inspiration?
How can Social Media turn supporters into advocates?
How do you bring together your community online?

Your Leading Thoughts

As I said, I’d like to take your insights and present them.

How would you suggest people humanize their campaigns?

How do you convert followers to advocates? How much is influence and leadership a part of this?

Archived Comments

http://www.sytaylor.net sytaylor

How to humanize a campaign? The first thing is to tell a story.

http://www.leedsrocks.co.uk didn’t have the time nor resources to articulate their story, but since the event it has spoken for itself. It was by the passionate amateurs of Leeds, for local businesses. They put on a show case and invited local talent to do what they do best. By providing a platform, and telling a story.

Since the event, the local businesses have benefited, the bands & designers have begun to work together and collaborate and there is talk of 2011.

They did it because they believe in their community, which is a very human message, which the audience grasped a hold of. With more time and a bigger community, next year they hope to drive more discussion and engagement with the brand.

It’s a journey that starts with listening, and providing a platform

/ Scott Gould

Classic “put all the kids in the show” line. This is probably the most powerful way to humanise things, because people’s stories become the stories.

Thanks for the example – will check it out

/ Scott Gould

This is my content thus far:

Humanising Campaigns

Premise: we humanise campaigns by putting humans in them.

1. Not “me” but “we”
– The social web has shifted our consumer individualisation into connected, shared experience (with advertising examples)
– Called social consumerism or the recommendation economy (with SM examples)
– This means we need to humanise our campaigns by making them social – plurality of humans, no singles
– Social is a mindset before it’s a media
– Social approaches have existed since the beginning of man. Social is our default method of communication and our default mindset.

3. Social Proof
– The other important thing about “We” is social proof: We view a behaviour as correct in a given situation to the degree that we see others doing it. This works best when the proof is provided by the actions of many other people.
– Examples
– The negative of social proof is inaction (if everyone is taking action, I don’t need to) made famous by Kitty Genovese
– Therefore we need an approach the systematically draws people in:

3. Gathering approach
– The beginning of marketing is scattering your message out, either intelligently or not.
– The next step is to gather from what you have scattered by eliciting participation. Marking each level of action, we can also hope to safeguard against inaction.
– Framework: Levels of participation
– Examples for each level
– The more we gather people, the more social proof we in turn create for others to see – thus we humanise campaigns.

4. Showcase
– We humanise campaigns by putting humans in them. The participants, not the actors, are the stars. Your existing followers are your campaign.
– By leveraging particular influencers (reward through participation), we can expect them to gather others too us.

http://www.concentricdots.com/ Stephen Bateman

Hi Scott – I didn’t see this post 3 weeks ago but for what it’s worth:

Your content for the talk hits the spot and you’re definitely the man to deliver the content!

It seems to me that not for profit and charitable status organisations need to work very hard at connecting with people, inspiring them, informing them and encouraging followers to be leaders in community.

Isn’t the best way to humanise campaigns with a smile?

Other components might be:

1. Embracing Diversity and being committed to inclusivity.

2. Distributing leadership and bringing decision-making down to the lowest appropriate level, encouraging everyone to take a lead.

3. Communicating context – ensuring everyone on the campaign is clear about the outcome and purpose of the campaign and their role within it and how they can contribute to the whole.

4. Instilling a culture of experimentation – encouraging followers to be leaders and to try new things rather than live in fear of making mistakes

Sorry I can’t be there for your talk – not in London till Tuesday 16th but I hope it goes well

Steve

/ Scott Gould

Stephen – thanks for adding these to the pot – some of those are things I forgot to put in but must go in.

See you tomorrow

http://twitter.com/nommo nommo

I was there. It was a great presentation Scott – lots of food for thought. I am looking forward to seeing the slides and/or video as I was too busy paying attention to take notes to pass onto my colleagues or make a note of actions we need to take!

/ Scott Gould

Hey, thanks for the kind words.

Hopefully the video will be available soon. I would post my slides, but they need some work to make sense before I do.

Scott

http://twitter.com/nommo nommo

No worries! It was the final constructed ‘sentence’ that I tried to write down but failed mostly… (I had to clap)

Incidentally – I ‘humanised’ my twitter account after the #techforgood but my ‘V’ mask seems to be stuck on here